For many years, companies have sought better ways to involve customers, partners, and suppliers in their collaborative interactions without the burdensome requirements of scaling those interactions in person. The rationale for doing so is clear - meetings with external groups can mean faster decisions, improved customer intimacy and cross-cultural communications, and the ability to use scarce resources more efficiently or move products to market faster.
Business Benefits
Cisco has developed a better way for you to connect with customers, partners, and suppliers with Cisco TelePresence™ collaboration systems. Through a powerful combination of technology and architectural design, local and remote participants feel as if they are in the same room (Figure 1). With intercompany Cisco TelePresence collaboration, you can now use your existing network to have a virtual meeting with anyone you want, any time you want to.
Figure 1. Cisco TelePresence Meeting
Following are some benefits of intercompany Cisco TelePresence collaboration:
• You can extend Cisco TelePresence meetings beyond your enterprise boundary to collaborate with your customers, suppliers, and partners. You do not need to build and manage a separate overlay network at additional cost or deploy an outside connection that may not meet your security requirements.
• Intercompany Cisco TelePresence collaboration maintains the simplicity of Cisco TelePresence features, such as "one button to push" to initiate meetings, or data collaboration options, allowing you to collaborate with others quickly and easily.
• You can scale network-based resources to meet the needs of your next intercompany meeting - enabling secure meet-me conferencing services for large and small meetings - or to expand meeting participants to include other standard high- and standard-definition (HD and SD, respectively) video endpoints with network-based interoperability and exchange services.
• The solution uses services in the network to guarantee quality of service (QoS), security, and value-added capabilities such as scalable multipoint meetings, scheduling, and directory services for a quality Cisco TelePresence experience, one that can securely and reliably span different enterprise networks using standards, encryption, and your existing firewalls.
Applications
Your most important business relationships extend outside your company, and they often require face-to-face meetings. With a Cisco TelePresence system enabled for intercompany collaboration, you can be more productive and more competitive: You can have some of your most important face-to-face interactions more easily, conveniently, and productively. Applications for intercompany Cisco TelePresence collaboration abound. For example, two Wall Street financial companies can arrange a merger for their distant clients by holding joint, confidential, and frequent "face-to-face" meetings. Global manufacturing companies can conduct cross-functional meetings that include suppliers and partners without waiting for people to travel. Pharmaceutical companies can meet with physicians and patients together during drug trials.
With intercompany capabilities in place for Cisco TelePresence conferencing, you can call a Cisco TelePresence room on another network using familiar meeting features. With intercompany collaboration capabilities you never lose the simplicity of impromptu dialing and "one-button-to-push" features to easily start meetings, and you add the ability to easily and securely connect your meeting participants through multiparty conferencing or meet-me bridge services on a regional or global scale.
Intercompany Cisco TelePresence collaboration enables you to securely call directly from a Cisco TelePresence endpoint on your network to a Cisco TelePresence room on a different network, at a public Cisco TelePresence Suite, or connect to other standards-based video endpoints through a secure connection from your service provider.
With intercompany Cisco TelePresence exchange services, businesses can extend their investment in Cisco TelePresence technology beyond enterprise and organizational boundaries to securely meet with important suppliers, customers, and partners to improve their competitive advantage, speed the time to market, and foster better collaboration in their businesses.
You can meet face-to-face with your customers, suppliers, or partners any time in highly secure communication around "one table" with an intercompany Cisco TelePresence meeting offered by Cisco service provider partners.
Intercompany Exchange Service Experience
Intercompany Cisco TelePresence collaboration delivers meeting experiences and features including (Note: Please check with participating service providers for service availability):
• Business-class performance:
– Flexible service offerings available monthly or by adding usage-based service options to your managed network and hosted services
– Optimized performance for telepresence with QoS for point-to-point and multipoint session bandwidth management.
• Secure:
– Network-integrated architecture supports secure access, policy enforcement, and closed user groups.
– Privacy and encryption support intercompany exchange capabilities including enterprise topology hiding and privacy and encryption support for interworked, policed, intercompany call routing.
– Intercompany Cisco TelePresence collaboration offers secure multiparty conferencing and meet-me services with authentication and personal-identification-number (PIN) support.
• Scalable:
– Scale your usage with flexible service pricing on a regional or global basis.
– Extend multipoint conferencing capability with network-based meet-me services.
– Increase meeting flexibility with access to schedule meetings through public Cisco TelePresence Suites located in hotels and office complexes worldwide.
– Intercompany Cisco TelePresence collaboration is optimized for geographic reach and intelligent service routing.
• Ease of use:
– Use familiar tools to initiate meetings (such as "one-button-to-push" features) and data-sharing functions.
– Simplify meeting establishment with scheduling and directory service options.
– Expand the number of meeting participants with hosted inteoperability services to enable collaboration with a broad range of telepresence, HD, and SD video endpoints.
• Network integrated:
– Network-aware architecture guarantees QoS and bandwidth needed to preserve telepresence quality of experience (QoE) across different enterprise and service provider networks.
– No separate overlay network infrastructure is required; you can use your existing enterprise network, connections, and value-added services you already receive from your service provider.
– Intercompany intercarrier service allows you to collaborate across participating networks, reliably and with high levels of security.
• Open and extendable:
– Intercompany Cisco TelePresence collaboration offers standards-based interoperability with video formats and endpoints.
– The open architecture enables delivery of interprovider telepresence connections.
– You can extend telepresence collaboration to other business video, collaboration, and value-added applications.
Learn More Today
Cisco has worked with our service provider partners to develop this breakthrough intercompany Cisco TelePresence capability for secure, reliable, and business-class service for intercompany collaboration.
